TOKYO (AP) — “Last Samurai Standing,” a Netflix series launching Thursday, is set in a Japan where the era of feudal samurai is about to end.
The hero, Saga Kokushu, played by Junichi Okada, is one of dozens of samurai in a survival game to save family, community and honor. Participants are given wooden tags to wear and add another for each rival they kill. The last man standing collects 100 billion yen ($650 million).
Directed by Michihito Fujii, whose credits include “The Journalist,” about an intrepid journalist, and “A Family,” depicting yakuza gangsters, the series pays homage to modern video games as well as the legacy of Japanese filmmakers like Akira Kurosawa and the original “The Last Samurai.”
This 2003 film, directed by Edward Zwick, starred Tom Cruise like the samurai hero. It was a big success, including in Japan, and helped Japanese stars like Ken Watanabe and Hiroyuki Sanada in their career in Hollywood.
“The goal we had in mind was to update jidaigeki,” Okada said, using the Japanese term for the samurai drama genre.
Okada, who also served as choreographer and producer on “Last Samurai Standing,” said everyone in Japanese cinema knows a lot about the greats who came before them, like Kurosawa. The genre even came with a grandiose “manual” on the proper representation of Japanese culture.
“We took a deliberate approach, keeping in mind that while we studied jidaigeki thoroughly, we were going to do what we wanted to do and create something that would look absolutely cool,” Okada told the Associated Press.
Okada is a black belt in Brazilian jujitsu. He has starred in various films, including “The Eternal Zero”, about the Zero pilots of World War II, directed by Takashi Yamazaki, from “Godzilla Minus One”.
Okada previously worked with director Fujii in “Hard Days,” a 2023 film about a police officer who tries to cover up a hit-and-run. Okada selected Fujii for “Last Samurai Standing”.
“We wanted something more emotional, with more story, more depth in character representation, more representation of culture. That’s what I kept in mind,” Okada said.
There’s also plenty of blood and gore, with swords spewing sparks and severed heads flying. Every person, even in the crowded battle scenes, is human and not computer-generated.
In a scene where the swordsmen’s bodies catch fire, the actors wore fire-resistant clothing and risked getting burned, Okada said.
What saves the work from being a mind-numbing series of action scenes is its storyline, with the universal theme of being caught in an unforgiving world in transition.
The female characters, including newcomer Yumia Fujisaki, seem more modern than the stereotypes that tend to populate older samurai works.
The cast also includes the stars of “Himizu” and “Parasyte.” Shota SometaniKazunari Ninomiya, memorable in Clint Eastwood’s “Letters from Iwo Jima,” and Takayuki Yamada, who has starred in various films and TV shows, including Netflix’s “The Naked Director.”
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Yuri Kageyama is on the discussions: https://www.threads.com/@yurikageyama
